Two Minds
by thepheonixisangry-la
Summary: Harry Dresden and Thomas Raith have stumbled upon a changling girl who has been forced to begin her change into a sylph. Harry and Thomas both narrate, and the story is set between Proven Guilty and White Night. Spoiler Alert!
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1; Harry

Often, my day starts with my alarm clock bawling its metallic alarm, my legs stiff and asleep because Mister, my 60-pound cat, sprawls across my knees with a satisfied cat smirk. I shove and bump him off, to his utmost discontent, throw the covers off, and smash the alarm clock with all the finesse of a cranky Neanderthal.

This morning when I woke up my hands were asleep, due the fact that my chin was cutting off their blood flow. The dampness of my subbasement was mildly oppressive, and a black marker was hovering above my nose, its sharp scent biting.

"Draw boobs on his forehead." Bob, a spirit of amazing intellect, was gleefully giving perverted instructions to my half-brother, Thomas Raith, who was also a vampire of the White Court.

I hang out with weird friends. So sue me.

Thomas chuckled as I opened my eyes. He was shirtless, and looked better than Abercrombie models. Ass.

"What are you? 18? Give me that marker," I growled as I took a sleepy swipe at it. Thomas held it just out of my reach and gave my hand a quick smiley face. While it was still moving. Double ass. "What are you doing here?"

"Came to have a nice chat with Bob." Thomas laughed. Egad. I'm glad I was asleep for that. The White Court vampires, rather than feeding on blood like the Black Court and the Red Court, feed on emotions and life force. The Raith family feeds predominantly on sexual energy, which is why Thomas looked like a Greek god escaped from Mount Olympus. Most women could not physically resist him, and at the peak of their emotions, the White Court vamps would feed on them. Thomas probably has many perverted stories about the women he's fed on. And Bob's a pervert.

"Why isn't he living here anymore? I _like_ him," Bob chirped. Bob the skull wasn't actually a skull, but a spirit living and bound to the skull. Bob served me and helped me with a lot of my spells. The only evidence of the spirit in the skull was the two pinpricks of light that moved in the eye sockets like eyes would. Bob didn't have a gender, but he chose the general male mindset, and had about ten erotic novels on the shelf beside him, which he thumbed through so often the spines were breaking. Next to the books was a single red ribbon that arrived on a very beautiful girl, ahem, wearing nothing else.

Don't look at me like that. It was a thank you gift. From Thomas. No other explanation needed.

"Because, Bob, I need _some_ of my sanity, at least." My comment came out surly, but if either of the two noticed, they didn't care.

"So what are you doing in the Harry Cave?" Thomas asked lightly.

"Sleeping," I grunted back. Stupid Abercrombie model pain-in-the-ass vampire.

"Thanks. I didn't get that from the fact you were unconscious, non-reactive to your name and a wet marker on your face, or your snoring." My brother rolled his steel-colored eyes and gave a too-white grin.

"I snore?" I asked with my eyebrows raised.

"Well…" Thomas started.

"Like a chainsaw!!" Bob interjected cheerily.

"But you're evading the question. What were you doing down here?" Thomas nailed me with the stare of a professional interrogator.

"I was…doing research. For another pamphlet-"

Bob made a loud game-show buzzer sound and yelled "Bullshit!" I shot him a withering glare, and my hand moved a fraction of an inch toward my favorite metal hammer. Bob's eye lights dimmed a bit, as if he retreated a little, and he fell silent. I tried again.

"I was making progress in a-"

Bob made a whisper soft buzzing noise and sung "buuuuull- shiiiiiit!" in perfect soprano.

The chair I was sitting in scraped loudly against the cement floor as my hand gripped the hammer's wooden handle tightly. Bob squeaked and the eye lights went out completely. I felt a restraining hand on my shoulder, firm but gentle, and turned to see a sad-faced Thomas.

"You were trying to find a cure again."

I said nothing, and my feet were suddenly a lot more interesting than anything else. A raw hole in my chest gave an uncomfortable throb. A few years ago, the woman I loved got into trouble because of me. The Red Court vampires took her to get to me, and by the time I got to her, I was too late. Susan had been infected by the vampires, but not fully turned. The moment she made her first kill, she would turn completely into a rubbery bat-monster with a beautiful human skin, bloodthirsty and ruthless. I had asked her to marry me, but she turned me down. She said she wasn't able to control herself, and hurting me would destroy her.

In more ways than one.

I had been trying to find a cure to the limbo Susan was in but I let myself go, and no one had seen me for months. I came out of it for a while, but Thomas was afraid I was sinking into that again.

Hell, _I _was afraid of that.

"Harry, you can't afford to live like that again."

I know.

"You can't afford to lose anymore work."

I know.

"You can't afford to ignore your friends-"

"I _know_, Thomas, I know I can't." I choked a bit on my words. His words stung. _I couldn't help her._

_It's impossible._

"And you can't afford any distractions right now."

"What?" My head snapped up and I eyed him.

"There were two bodies of homeless men found by Lake Michigan." Thomas' eyes were focused on mine.

"There must be magic involved if you're telling me this," I kneaded the space between my eyebrows. I just love being a wizard. Give it a moment.

"Well, not magic exactly…"

Wait for it…

"One's head was cleanly and completely severed from his body. The other one's head was split vertically."

Give it a minute.

"They were killed by a sword-like weapon."

"Oh, lovely." Here we go.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2; Thomas

I watched my groggy and grumpy brother stomp up the ladder that lead out of his subbasement. I hesitated, perusing the scattered notes on his table, next to a tiny model of Chicago, made of pewter and precise down to the tree in central park that was split by lightning a few years back by a massive thunderstorm, which happened to be cause by faerie deities fighting about the weather, or something. All I know is that Harry was in that war, and killed a faerie queen. A freaking _queen_.

My brother may not be a looker, but he's one hell of a badass. So I didn't judge his playing with city dolls.

I looked to Bob. As if responding to my gaze, the little skull's eye sockets lit slightly, almost like he were peeking around a corner.

"Bob." Pinpoints of light flicked on like a lighter, and then trained on me.

"Tell me the story of the hot nun again!" Eagerness made the lights dance.

"Bob. We're serious now. How bad is it?"

His eyes dimmed a little in disappointment. "I am being serious. Please?"

I bared my teeth at him. "Bob…"

"Fine! Fine, geez, everyone's all pissy today." He paused to sulk for a moment. "It's not as bad this time." I breathed a sigh of relief, and he continued. "Last time he was more desperate. This time he's more easily distracted. He'll take a break, stretch, take a moment to eat something. It's more desire than need now."

"Good." I hated seeing what he'd become then. I'd kept an eye on my brother, even before he knew who I was. Our mother, Margaret LeFey, was an intelligent, gifted, wild woman. Until a few years ago, he didn't know anything about her, but I did. So I helped him, most of the time without him knowing. And I learned how much of her strength Harry inherited. In the few years I've known him, Harry has blown up several demons, stopped at least three kinds of werewolves, engulfed a building of Red Court vampires in flames (starting a WAR), killed a faerie queen and stopped an unearthly war that would have inevitably destroyed the earth, spat in the face of the equivalent of an Elvin god, raised a freaking dinosaur from the dead… am I getting my point through? On the inside, though, Harry is exhausted. No one in history has ever created so much work for himself. Not only that, but he's covered in scars, taken bullets, destroyed one of his hands, and broken nearly every bone in his body. But those things don't hurt him nearly as much as his memories do. He's seen things, man. People he couldn't save. And it's torn him up.

I worry about him.

He yelled down the stairs that he was leaving, and to help myself to anything in the fridge.

Despite all things the things above, he's a good man.

I heard the door of his little go-cart slam, and I waited for the roar, disproportionate to the size of the little Volkswagen Beetle, to belt out of the gravel lot and away. Then I climbed the stairs and stuck my nose into his icebox. Mac was a friend of Harry's, and creates microbrews that make gods cry. Mac would kill him if he found out Harry chilled it, but I think Harry's banking on the assumption that Mac won't waltz in the door and check the fridge for his beers. I popped one open with my teeth and drained it, its amber taste hitting my tongue perfectly. It was still good chilled; there is justice in the world.

After the first draw from the second bottle, I poked my head into the pantry. How he got all these amazing foods, I don't know. He won't tell me for some reason. Secrets drive me crazy, but I'm not going to complain, as long as the source keeps providing me with my favorite potato chips, snack size. I had just polished them off, savoring the last salty crumbs at the bottom, when there was a knock at the door.

Well, not really a knock. More like a _knock, thump._ Whatever had knocked sounded like it had immediately hit the ground. I was not looking forward to opening the door. Sirens whined like a mosquito in my ear, and when I opened the giant metal door Harry had installed after the apartment was stormed by reanimated corpses, the sirens became louder, like they were only a few streets down. What was more important, though, was what was in front of me, on the cold cement. The woman was kneeling, her arms crossed in front her and pushed to her chest, like she trying to avoid indecency, or was trying to protect herself. It was probably a little of both, because two metal-colored dragonfly wings had ripped the back of her shirt in half. She looked up at me and opened her mouth.

"Y…you're Harry Dresden?" Her voice was soft as a whisper, a squeak emphasizing the last word. Her head whipped to her left and her voice got more fervent when the police sirens came obviously closer. "Please," her eyes, all-too-human, were wide and racked with terror, like a lost fawn facing a bear. Her shaking rattled her teeth and her limp hair fell in her face, sticking to the sides of her cheeks.

And she was covered in blood. Her face was sickly pale, like all the blood she wore was hers, but something on her haunted face told me it wasn't.

"Oh, God," her shaking voice was a whisper again. "You have to help me." The word "help" was choked by a sob.

Aw, shit.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3; Harry

I love the autumn air. Not cold, and devoid of any humidity. It was perfect weather for not getting glares when I donned my black leather duster. As I tread the gravel toward the lake, I noticed all the sights and smells of Lake Michigan. My eye first caught the navy blue and tan of the ebbing and flowing water, carrying sediments and throwing them around jovially under the water. The white caps in the distance, the scent of mildew and fish, and the crunch of beige sand under my shoes were recognized as well as I hurried closer to something that would inevitably ruin the peace.

Ah. There it was.

An ugly brown had seeped into the sand, splattered like the paint on those paintings you find in museums, where it looks like the artist flung a brush full randomly at the canvas, and you stare at it as you think of how it resembles something you've seen an elephant paint, and wonder how the hell it sold for a gazillion dollars. As I got closer, where there was a crowd of very interested police officers concentrating on the middle of where they were standing, the brown splatters got closer and closer, at last forming into a big puddle underneath an officer's feet. I overheard an officer reports that forensics had found at more three different people's blood at the scene, two belonging to the murder victims and one unknown, possibly the suspect.

An older dark-skinned man observed with a grim face watched from the opposite side of the group from me. He glanced up, and a wary smile played on his face, then confusion. He mumbled something into someone's ear, someone I couldn't see and that he had to bend down to reach, then he separated from the group. Seconds later, Detective Rawlins and Sergeant Murphy rounded the mass.

"Harry," Murphy greeted me, a little skeptical. "I was just telling Rawlins that I was going to call you…"

"Yea, my ears were burning," I responded somewhat cheerily, but there was no hiding the dark undertone in my voice as I looked at the blood under my feet. "What's going on?"

"Two unidentified men were murdered last night. One is completely decapitated, and the other's head is cleaved in two." She looked tough and chock full of businesslike reserve, but she was pale and her face was hard as she looked at me. "The murder weapon was a sword." She left the rest of the sentence, laced with accusation, hang in the air. She suspected the wardens of the White Council, the only people she knew who carried big-ass swords and had also executed warlocks in Chicago before.

"I'd have to check. If it was…" I looked at Rawlins. He stood a few feet off to the side, and seemed to be very interested in a seagull that was screaming a few feet farther off. "If it was the wardens, to constitute an execution, they would have had to be warlocks. I'd have to get close to them, and I might be able to sense any residual magic on them." I looked at the sun, low over the lake in the east, and Murphy followed my gaze. "There's no guarantee that I'll find anything, though. Not since the sun has risen. Most, if not all, the residual magic has been dispersed."

Murphy did not look happy about that. She loves the perfect case. Stop it before it happens and put the bad guy away immediately. This case shot that halfway to hell, so she was already upset. She was hoping the answer would be easy to find. It so rarely was.

She strode over to Rawlins and talked quickly to him, looking first to me, then to the mass of policemen, who were starting to disperse. He nodded, and he whispered something in another cops ear. The cop looked at me, frowned, and mentioned me through. I nodded at both of them, and knelt down over the gruesome sight.

The first man's body lay on his back, his knees folded under him like he was kneeling before he fell. His neck was sliced at an angle, the cut staring at the base of the throat and ending at the top of the spine. He was covered in his blood, which looked like it had squirted like a crimson fountain from his artery. His head lay a few feet away, and it was guarded from the hungry seagull by the police. The second man was about a foot to his left, on his stomach and a little on his side. He had a lot less blood, but was a more disturbing sight. His skull had been completely opened, displaying the dull grey-pink intricacies of the human brain to the beach. It was such a disgusting sight, and the combination of that and the smells of the beach and the blood made me wobble on the balls of my feet. I held myself steady for a moment, closing my eyes and counting down from five, before opening them again, and holding my hands a couple inches away from the corpses. I concentrated, trying to find the tell-tale throbbing of nauseating energies that generally surround a warlock. I tried to find any residual thrum of energy that the wardens' swords emitted. I tried to find _anything,_ but…

No, nothing but the violence of their death came from the two corpses. I frowned at them, then at Murphy and Rawlins. Her eyes became frustrated, and she turned away. The rest of the cops were eyeing me, unhappy, and I was shunted from the group. Murphy approached me again.

"What is it?" She was obviously holding on to hope that I had found something, even something little.

"I didn't find any residual energy, but I'm fairly sure they weren't warlocks. The angle of the cut on the guy's neck shows that he was kneeling over whatever killed him. It would be extremely hard for the wardens to get such a clean cut at that angle by standing over him. And as for the second guy, I've never heard an execution that didn't completely take the warlocks head off, unless there was a fight. They would still try to remove the head, no matter how the warlock was killed. Also, a warden always cleans up after executions. This is way too messy. The pieces don't fit." I paused and said, "I'm sorry, Murph."

She eyed me.

"I can check it out anyway," I sighed.

"You bet your ass you can check it out anyway," she said. "Rawlins." She turned to him discussed something quietly with him. He nodded, and they both walked over.

I nodded. "Rawlins."

"Dresden. What's a busy guy like you doing over here at this hour?"

"Oh, you know. Wanted to get a nice swim, try to get an early morning tan, see if I can find any fun dead bodies to check out."

"Fun dead bodies, huh?"

"I like to poke them with sticks."

He grunted. "Well, we can hire you, but it wouldn't be for as much pay as you usually get."

"A deal-or-no-deal kind of thing?"

"You got it." He gave a twitch of his shoulder, and gave me a face that said _I don't make the rules, sorry._ "If it were up to Stallins, I'd have to tell you that civilians aren't allowed near murder sites and kick you out."

"Such a charming fellow." I said, a bit of a snarl on my face. But I needed the money. "I'm in. We'll get this guy, no problem." Murphy put her game face on.

The power of positive thinking.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4; Thomas

The young woman lay shivering and terrified in front of me. I must have been feeling sympathetic to my brother's ridiculous sense of chivalry, because when her all-too-human eyes shed a tear that rolled down her cheek, picking up semi-dried blood on the tracks tears had travelled before, I instinctively grabbed her wrist and harshly tugged her into his apartment. Chicago's finest tore down the street moments later, sirens wailing. She folded herself against my chest, which I had put between her and the door, blocking the only view of her. She watched with heated eyes and I with cold patience as the last of the police cars rolled past. We listened in silence as the sirens got farther away, then the apartment went quiet but for her ragged, pained breathing. She rested her face against my chest, sighed, and promptly lost consciousness.

I caught her before she hit the ground. Cautiously, I picked her up and went to find a blanket. I juggled her as gently as I could, avoiding her wings, and lay the blanket haphazardly on Harry's bed, then set her on her stomach, showing me where most of the blood came from. Two long gashes, puckered along the edges, crusted with a heavy amount of blood, ran parallel with her spine, one on either side, ending at the bases of her two wings. I mumbled streams of cuss words. What the hell had happened? I left to get a few essentials; a washcloth, a bowl of warm water, gauze, and Bob. I plunked him down on the nightstand next to her.

"What the hell, Bob?"

Lights flicked on and he squeaked as they fell on the young woman. They ran up and down, taking everything in, and then said, "I should ask the same thing. Why did you let her in?" he paused for a moment, then remarked "Hey! Her bra's cut off!"

I literally snarled at him. "The police were chasing her. She looked terrified, and I just… pulled her in. The police wouldn't know what to do with her." I took the washcloth and wet it in the water, then started mopping the blood off from around the wounds. "I don't either, but luckily, I have you. Now what is she, and what's she doing here?"

Bob watched me in silence for a few moments as the washcloth picked up the blood, revealing pale skin. I snapped my fingers with the other hand, and his eye lights left the girl.

"She looks like a Sylph, which is very possible. Sylphs have only one sex, female, and therefore have to reproduce with human males, creating changelings." He looked at her again, and said "that's probably what she is." He looked harder and said "the one thing I don't really understand is why she's only half-changed. It's like she's locked in a limbo between human and fae. Sylphs have razor claws to match those wings, but her hands are human. It could be a glamour, though. She's probably trying to kill Harry."

I frowned. "Don't changelings have odd-colored hair?" I remembered the photo of four changelings and an older man that clung to the refrigerator under a magnet.

"Not always. Remember Harry's godmother, the Leanansidhe? She has red hair, like some humans can."

The woman stirred, and then gasped. Her muscles tensed, and her wings twitched a little. "Hey, hey, calm down, it's ok!" I said quickly and calmly, putting my hand gently on her shoulder. Bob's lights winked out, but not before he got a good look at her bright blue eyes. Her human eyes. The lights flicked to me and extinguished. She breathed erratically for a few minutes, and drew her arms into her chest. Her wings drifted up and got almost vertical. They looked so…delicate. I held her without restraining her, and shushed her. "Sit still. I'm trying to clean your wounds. You're going to hurt yourself." She calmed down, turning her head to me, her eyes still bright, but not as scared anymore. I lay the hot washcloth on her back, almost finished with cleaning the blood off the wounds. Another drop fell on a clean section, dropping from her wings.

"Who are you? What happened?" I asked tentatively.

She shivered a moment, and then spoke softly. "My name is Amy Delrietta. And I don't _know._" She put such a frustrated stress on that last word. "I can only tell you some of it, but I can't explain it." She took a pained breath and continued.

"I was driving to my friend's house. She's having her baby shower, and I was so excited. I was changing lanes when another car rammed into mine. My car slid off the road and flipped into the ditch. I climbed out, but the car that hit me was gone. My car was trashed, and my cell phone was broken. There were woods on the side of the road, and I must have hit my head because I walked in without thinking about it." She shivered, and was quiet for a minute. I sat there and let her continue.

"I could hear the lake, so I walked towards the noise, but there was a man there, in the woods. He…he knew my name. He said to stand still, that he would help me." Tears started down her face again. "He came closer and said again to stand still. He reached into his pocket, I thought he was going to get his phone, but he pulled something yellow out, it looked like…like a tooth, or a fang. He said to stay still again, and I realized I couldn't move. He stabbed me with it," she choked on her words. "In my stomach. Then my back hurt, a lot. He kept telling me to hold still, but then I tried to fight him. It was like trying to move in jelly, but I hit him. I think it surprised him, because I didn't hit him hard, but I ran. My back hurt so badly, and running made it worse. Then I felt it start to bleed. It was like knifes trying to cut their way out of me. I was almost sick from it when I fell down a bluff to the lake shore. I just lay there, face down. Then I think I blacked out."

What the hell?

I pulled the layered gauze pads and the rolled gauze out. I lay the gauze pads on her wounds, pressing gently. She hissed in a breath but didn't move otherwise. They stuck somewhat to the wounds and I stood her up very, very gently. Harry's various wounds had given me practice in medical care, but I was no expert. She had to see a real doctor. All I could do was a temporary patch job. I unrolled the gauze to hold the pads on, and in doing this saw the rest of the injuries she had, like the stab wound in the lower left part of her abdomen. I tried to ignore the fact that to put the gauze on, she needed to remove her ripped clothing, including her bra, but I cleaned and wrapped her anyway.

"Is this too tight?" I asked as I finished. She shook her head, and something in her eyes told me her story wasn't done. I paused and watched her face for a moment.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me? As long as we're on a roll?" A huge tear slid down as her face soured, like she was going to be sick.

"Amy?" I prodded, but before I could continue, she spat the ending to the story.

"I killed those men on the beach."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5; Harry

Chicago is one of the biggest and most populous cities in the US. Roughly three million people live in this city. Masses of people walk the streets here every day.

Because there's no place to park you're freaking _car_.

Two miles away, the Blue Beetle sat in a parking lot. Not that I minded the walk, I just hated trolling around in the city hunting a parking spot. I kept a steady pace, my eyes focused forward, as if I held a heavy purpose as I strode down the concrete.

Now generally, I am a pretty agile fighter. I can dodge, jab, parry, so on and so forth. I can run like hell when I need to, mostly because my legs are three feet long. I have run miles down a faerie battleground in the midst of a raging war. I run as exercise as often as I can not to make myself look good, but to be able to escape the various nasties that come my way more often than I would like. Walking isn't usually a difficult task for me, but today I managed to trip on a flat surface, thoroughly ruining my tough guy gait.

Say what you like, though. It takes skill to trip on flat surfaces.

My car wheezed into the driveway, chugging a few times before settling with a very convincing imitation of a senior citizen groaning into a comfy chair. I ambled down my concrete stairs when my shoe made that distinctive ripping sound, like opening Velcro. Normally, that means someone had spilt sugar-saturated soda, and the dry puddle would be adorned with greedy bees that had taken too long in the mess, and were now stuck in the equivalent of one of those sadistic sticky mouse traps.

But my nose said otherwise.

My stomach rolled as the iron-like smell of blood assaulted me. It was in massive puddles outside of my door, and a smudge and a rough handprint on the bricks. I waved my wards aside quickly and ran inside as fast as my stupid broken steel door would let me.

I knew it wasn't Thomas' blood. Thomas may look mostly human, but his blood, rather than a human's dark red, had the pale pink color of the White Court. However, I had many friends who did bleed red, and who might come to me for help if they were. Susan's face hit my mind immediately, then Elaine, an old friend and valuable ally, then Murphy, then Billy, a werewolf whose pack had saved my ass on more than one occasion. More and more faces of people I cared about bombarded my mind for an eternity until my door gave away to reveal…

No one. But the blood that was on my steps was all around my apartment. Drips and a vaguely foot-shaped smudge decorated a spot near the door, then more drips around the apartment. I followed them, somewhat frantically, to a closet, which had been rummaged though, then my bedroom. I opened the door to the cramped room.

My bed looked like a makeshift operating table. There was a sheet thrown haphazardly on top of my covers, soaked through in areas with semi-dry blood. Bandages and their wrappers were spread carelessly across the floor around the side of the bed facing the door.

Thomas. Whoever was hurt, whoever had been here, Thomas had let them in and treated them as best he could. I scanned the room again and found a little bleached skull on my dresser trying really hard to look invisible.

"Oh, Bob," I called with a really transparent attempt at being calm. He remained inanimate for a moment. Then his eye lights turned on slowly.

"Oh. Hi, Harry." His voice had a slight nervous tremor. "Uh, I'm kind of in the middle of a nap. Leave a message after the tone." The lights in the sockets flicked out again.

I picked the skull up and held it in my palm, facing me, and chuckled dangerously. "Oh-ho. This is _really_ not the time to play the smartass game. "

He remained quiet.

"Bob…" the threat was thick in my voice. Before I said anything else, the lights flicked back on again, like miniscule lighter flames.

"Harry," he chided. "There's really no reason to get all worked up…"

"It looks like a massacre in here." I snarled.

"You're acting like this is _my_ fault," Bob started in an affronted tone. Had he arms he would have thrown them back in exasperation. "You always do this. Really, am I just your punching bag?"

"Bob." I covered my face completely with my other hand. He steamrolled over me.

"Is that all I am to you? I am a spirit of intellect, partner to many famous and powerful wizards! I-"

"BOB!" I barked sharply, cutting his distraction rant short with as much force as I could muster.

The little lights looked up at me guiltily.

"Yes?"

I took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the…sockets. I phrased my question as a demand.

"What. Happened."


End file.
